nothing from the young girl herself. He delighted in the formal address
and conclusion; they pleased him as he had been pleased by an angular
gesture in some expressive girlish figure in an early painting. The
letter renewed that impression of strong feeling combined with an almost
rigid simplicity, which Roderick's betrothed had personally given
him. And its homely stiffness seemed a vivid reflection of a life
concentrated, as the young girl had borrowed warrant from her companion
to say, in a single devoted idea. The monotonous days of the two women
seemed to Rowland's fancy to follow each other like the tick-tick of a
great time-piece, marking off the hours which separated them from the
supreme felicity of clasping the far-away son and lover to lips sealed
with the excess of joy. He hoped that Roderick, now that he had shaken
off the oppression of his own importunate faith, was not losing a
tolerant temper for the silent prayers of the two women at Northampton.

He was left to vain conjectures, however, as to Roderick's actual moods
and occupations. He knew he was no letter-writer, and that, in the young
sculptor's own phrase, he had at any time rather build a monument than
write a note. But when a month had passed without news of him, he began
to be half anxious and half angry, and wrote him three lines, in the
care of a Continental banker, begging him at least to give some sign of
whether he was alive or dead. A week afterwards came an answer--brief,
and dated Baden-Baden. "I know I have been a great brute," Roderick
wrote, "not to have sent you a word before; but really I don't know what
has got into me. I have lately learned terribly well how to be idle. I
am afraid to think how long it is since I wrote to my mother or to Mary.
Heaven help them--poor, patient, trustful creatures! I don't know how to
tell you what I am doing. It seems all amusing enough while I do it, but
it would make a poor show in a narrative intended for your formidable
eyes. I found Baxter in Switzerland, or rather he found me, and he